Spartacus

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Authors: Lewis Grassic Gibbon
lanista and the taciturn Thracian savage. And for a moment a cold wonder held him. How had these two come to free and lead the Gladiators, to gather about them the beginnings of the slave-revolt? How came this savage to show the generalship he had done in two battles? And he remembered the saying of the Jew ben Sanballat that the ordering of these battles was the ordering of a hunter planning a battle, their success the success of surprise against known tactics in marshalling a battle. How long would these successes continue with the half-armed rout that already called itself Legio Libera – the Free Legion?
    And he knew it likely that another month would see that legion dispersed or enslaved afresh. The Republic as yet had hardly moved. Now, with the rout of Furius, the Wolf would howl her packs to the hunt and the slaying. But ere they gathered . . .
    That would be a good play to play. And the Greek eunuch thought with a twisted mouth how the divine Plato would have stared in amaze had he heard it proposed that a Thracian savage, a slave eunuch and a courtesan hardly more than a girl should set to organizing the Republic which he had planned! Yet, ere the Romans gathered and ended the revolt for ever, the Gods might laugh at that jest – if he could prevail on the Thracian to play it.
    â€˜Strategos.’
    Spartacus turned round slowly, the stallion still nuzzling his hand. For a moment Kleon felt a strange pity for this black-staring barbarian with whose heart and head he planned to play. Then he saw, as Elpinice herself had seen, that the Thracian was altering. He had altered in the space of a day, it seemed, the blankness was fading from the deep, dark eyes, there was a wakening purpose there, a fresh set to the giant head, the bearded mouth grown stern. Elpinice gave a cry, staring. Her child-savage possessed by a nameless God: he was changing and transmuting before her eyes.
    Kleon said: ‘When we reach Lucania – what then?’
    â€˜We’ll march to the sea and seize a town. Then we’ll seize ships, and each return to his own country.’
    Elpinice recognized phrases of her own, whispered in the kennels of Batiates. But now they were said with a purpose and deliberation that made them Spartacus’s own. Kleon laughed his shrill, high laugh, squatting and eating the olives.
    â€˜Each his own country! And aren’t the Masters waiting in each country? The Wolf has conquered the world. There’s a Roman Army in Thrace, I’ve heard. What better will you be?’
    The girl’s young-old eyes turned on him under her straight line of brows. ‘At least we’ll be out of Italy.’
    â€˜And still: what better will you be? Listen to me, Strategos. I’m a eunuch and no-man, from whom men and Gods turn their faces. But I’m a literatus as well – one who has read and pondered the thoughts and plans of many men. Slaves have risen before against the Masters, in Italy and in Greece. For a little while they’ve held their own, but never for longer than a little while. They’ve wasted the early days of revolt either in looting and rape or in seeking escape to that land that lies neither in Thrace nor under the Nile Cataracts: but elsewhere.’
    â€˜Where?’ Elpinice asked, for the Gladiator stared in silence.
    Kleon pointed west, where the sun already rested on the hills.
    â€˜The dead go there, they used to tell. Beyond drowned Atlantis, the Islands of the Blest. Nowhere, in fact.’
    Then the girl with old eyes, the slave bedwoman of a Gladiator-farmer, said a thing as unexpected by the Greek as a blasphemy on the lips of a woman.
    â€˜I think it’s neither in Thrace nor your Islands, this land you mock. It lives in our dreams and our hopes, and maybe we’ll never attain it. But – we broke out of Batiates’ ludus to try. ’
    â€˜Then let us try here – in Italy. Given a leader strong and skilful, given men who

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